New Fiction

By SOPHIE RATCLIFFE

Last updated at 14:08 23 April 2007

Jack The Lad And Bloody Mary by Joseph Connolly (Faber, £12.99) It's 1939 and Jack and Mary are in love. As yet unmarried they get by in their London flat, listening to the wireless and getting frisky under the Christmas tree.

Mary has a job in a laundry and Jack makes enough as a labourer to keep their household together.

With the arrival of war, home life becomes tense. Jack falls in with Jonathan Leakey, a London underworld impresario, and begins to flash an alarming amount of cash. Meanwhile, Mary's diary entries record the trials of dealing with his frequent brawling, her longing for her evacuee son and the question of whether she has stockpiled enough tinned tangerines.

Through a series of monologues, Connolly builds a vivid picture of life in the Blitz, but the story's real interest lies with Mary's development as a character, and the tale she can barely bring herself to tell.

In between the lines of her diary, Connolly reveals a story of unwanted pregnancy, backstreet abortionists and Mary's own mission to 'ease the lot of afflicted women'.

This enormous book contains much that is grim, bloody, almost overwhelming to read, but it proves Connolly to be an original and masterly novelist.

Flanagan's last novel, the acclaimed Gould's Book Of Fish, defied most categories.

The Unknown Terrorist seems to be a more straightforward thriller - but with a serious edge. The supposed 'unknown' of the title is an Australian pole dancer, who hides her sadness behind Dolce & Gabbana shades.

Gina, aka 'The Doll', keeps her dreams small, hanging out at Bondi beach with friends and shopping for lingerie at La Perla, but life changes when she hooks up with a stranger. On waking, she finds the man has vanished, soon to be pursued by the police who want to question him about a series of unexploded bombs. Gina decides to lie low, but ageing hack Richard Cody recognises her from the CCTV footage and begins to concoct some copy.

Casting an Aussie girl as prime suspect in a terrorist ring is exactly what he needs to whip up a media frenzy and revive his career. Cody's behaviour becomes increasingly vile, and his broadcasts have about as much substance as the pole dancer's stage panties.

Gina never loses her appeal as a character and a symbol of the way love - as Flanagan puts it - is never quite enough.

A funny, filmic and gripping writer, he's a novelist and a philosopher for our time.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin, £7.99)'Photography is all about secrets,' David Henry tells his son. 'The secrets we all have and will never tell.' Henry's blackest secret is hidden in the winter of 1964, the night his wife went into labour. With no time to find the consultant, Henry, a trained doctor, took charge.

The firstborn was Paul, a healthy baby boy. The second, a girl, showed the signs of Down's syndrome. In a crucial moment, Henry made a decision, asking the nurse to take the newborn to a local asylum. When his wife regained consciousness, he told her that her second child was stillborn.

As Henry hides in his darkroom, the novel reveals the complex effects a lie can have on a marriage. For the couple, the ghost of their daughter haunts them in different ways: they shape themselves around her absence.

The nurse who witnessed the birth carries another, different, burden. Having adopted the half-unwanted child as her own, she must live with the knowledge that she is nursing a daughter, and a secret, that rightly belong to another.

This is a strong and moving story, written with clarity and verve. It's easy to see how it gained its place on the U.S. bestseller lists.